


apyuta

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Mahabharata fics [11]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Child Abandonment, Gen, Implied Victim-Blaming, Oneshot, Teenage Pregnancy, double standards, implied rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 08:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16133165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: A father is to protect his children too. Pritha, Karna, and Surya on the banks of the river Ganga.apyuta (Sanksrit): also





	apyuta

The Sun is ever-present, eternal, providing warmth and nourishing life even at nighttime. He shines upon all the three worlds and sees all that happens.

A girl, not much past fourteen, clad in her oldest sari, walks along the river Ganga in the dead of night and hefts the basket more firmly onto her hip. Her feet are barefoot, either in penitence or in practicality. When she has found a spot along the bank concealed by the copse, her pace quickens and she conceals herself in their shadowy branches.

She sets the basket and its squalling bundle onto the marshy shore, wincing as she crouches. Her body still aches with the pains of sudden childbirth. _Bend with your knees, not your back_ : a morsel of advice she had once heard in the marketplace between a vendor and his son. She had almost forgotten it; why would a princess need to know that?

But an unwed mother does, and does her soon-to-be- _sutaputra_ son.

Dawn creeps over the horizon, illuminating the armor and earrings on the baby that seem to be forged out of sunlight themselves, though in reality it is the _amrita_ nectar of the gods. Pritha traces a hand over the front breastplate. Despite the nighttime air, it is warm.

She glances up at the rising sun, fiery orange and blazing in all its glory. Only she, her son, and the sun will be witness to the crime that is about to take place. A mother nourishes her child and teaches him, even at the cost of her own life and honor. But Pritha is fourteen, and terrified, and the daughter of one father who gave her away and the daughter of another father who exposed her to a bellicose sage and the mother of a child whose father has raped her.

“A father protects his child,” she says out loud, and the child stirs at her voice. Already he has learned to recognize it; already he must learn to forget it. “The father defends him and shelters him so that he might learn his legacy and uphold it to the world.”

With a small splash and a push, the basket sets sail in the current, bobbing away and turning slow circles. “He is your son too,” Pritha says, staring unblinking at Suryadeva. “You are a god. Protect our son.”

The kavacha and kundala gleam even from far away on the shimmering stream, twin points of light blinding white and golden.

**Author's Note:**

> Written because Kunti gets blamed for setting Karna afloat but I don’t see it mentioned that she ensured the sun god would protect him, hence the armors and earrings. And nobody seems to mention that it was also Surya’s job to look after his son.


End file.
